Downes Article

Downes- Educational Blogging

In summary a blog is an online journal that can be easily updated. The current ways teachers are using weblogs are:

* Teachers use blogs to replace the standard class Web page
* Instructors begin to link to Internet items that relate to their course
* To organize in-class discussions and to develop our community of learners
* Some instructors are using blogs to organize class seminars and to provide summaries of
readings
* Students may be asked to write their own blogs as part of their course grade


I think these are all very effective ways to use blogging in education. I think it is definitely geared more towards college and high school than the elementary grades.
While thinking of how to use this in the classroom I can’t help but to think about the restrictions on education. The article briefly mentions this. I’m worried about the student privacy issue.

I do agree that the ease of use for weblogs in very appealing. Just last week, at my school, we were having a discussion about possibly creating an e-mail group for parents. We were interested in sending out newsletters and important information to parents through e-mail. As soon as I learned about this weblog idea I mentioned it to my principal as an idea to update parents about events. This would help us with not having to change the website all the time. We have a nice school web page, but every time we want to change it we have to contact the web designer to do it for us. Our page is Mueller Charter School